It’s a leap year, which sounds neat. An extra day every four years.
It’s a signal of Olympic years – specifically the Summer Olympics, since the people who manage the Olympics finally figured out that having the Winter Games and the Summer Games in the same calendar year was a bit much for TV advertisers to afford. Do you really think they changed for any other reason?
Most of us, I think, like the (Summer) Olympics. Most of us ‘round here don’t understand much about the Winter Olympics, but it was really cool (pun intended) to discover during our brief dose of winter weather that one of the stars of the Winter Games, the 1994 gold medalist skater Oksana Bauil, a native Ukrainian, has lived in Shreveport for several years. We saw an early January clip of her and her daughter gliding and twirling on a patch of ice. Delightful!
When the Olympic torch is lit in Paris July 26, local heroes and former USA Olympians Tim Dement (boxing in the 1972 Munich Games), Hollis Conway (high jump medalist in 1988 and 1992) and Kendrick Farris (weightlifting in the games of 2008, 2012 and 2016) will relish and share their memories of being on the grandest stage in sports.
Leap Day also warns us there’s a presidential election coming up in nine months, which may or may not be a good thing. It’s generally been believed to be good for democracy, but these days, it’s increasingly hard to tell.
People born on Feb. 29 age four times slower than the rest of us. If only Biden and Trump were Leap Day babies ….
All snark aside, there’s not any fuss made about Leap Day. You’d think if it happens once every four years, considering some of the days we get as holidays, it would be a day off for everybody. There are no cards to send, no traditions of note, no special music. Nor am I suggesting such.
But it comes at the peak of Crossover Season, which is nothing like the Christmas Season. That end-of-year stretch is a glorious time for sports, with high school football championships decided, college bowl games staged, NFL playoff jockeying ongoing, and some low-key basketball and prep soccer being played. Santa comes. Everything stops, briefly for some, and for others, there’s extended quality time.
Crossover Season never sleeps.
It involves the baseball season. And the softball season. And basketball (boys and girls, and in college men and women), and tennis, and golf. Bowling. Gymnastics. Track and field (indoors, then outside). Especially for Mudbugs fanatics, hockey. Even, at some colleges, spring football practice.
For the multi-sport high school athlete (and there are still some of those, thankfully, in this day of absurd specialization), it means finding time to squeeze in some trips to the batters’ box alongside reps at the free throw line. That’s a fun challenge.
For the ticket takers, concession stand workers, and some versatile game officials, it’s a rapid-fire series of events, nights away from home, but more cash flow for the summer vacation fund, or just to make ends meet. That’s nice.
But for the athletic trainers, facility staffers, mid-level administrators, and my former profession, the sports information directors and their crews, it’s anything but nice. Not to say these folks don’t love what they do, but Crossover Season puts them in air traffic controller mode, and they’re not paid that well.
Don’t ask them about the new, or just returned, TV shows. No way any of them are keeping up with The Bachelor or Will Trent. Or, for that matter, a semi-normal sleep schedule.
Add a Leap Day into this? An extra lap for these frantic folks.
Nobody forced them to do what they (ordinarily) love to do. But trust me, a Recovering SID. They will be mentally dancing the Happy Dance when Crossover Season fades away.
Contact Doug at sbjdoug@gmail.com